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Anxious Hours in Pivotland: Where's My Sailthrough?!!

President Obama has been laggard in executing a cherished
pivot initiative, the defiant US Navy sailthrough within 12 miles of the PRC’s
faux-island holdings in the South China Sea.

Bonnie Glaser, the Princess of the Pivot at CSIS, all-capped
her frustration in a tweet on October 16:

US-China confrontation
looms in troubled waters of South China Sea. Stop talking and DO THE FONOP
ALREADY!

“FONOP” as in “Freedom of Navigation Op.” I might point out that a naval sailthrough
within a country’s claimed 12-mile territorial limit is not automatically a piece
of sovereignty-repudiating outrance.Naval vessels are free to sail within other
countries’ 12 mile limit in innocent passage from Point A to Point B.

In fact, the PLA Navy just did that, sending flotilla through
US territorial seas in the Aleutian Islands, pointedly, in September just prior
to Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States.And the US Navy was good with that:

“The five PLAN ships
transited expeditiously and continuously through the Aleutian Island chain
in a manner consistent with international law.”

The Chinese stunt
appeared to me to be a successful piece of inoculation by the PRC, one that
neutralized the “presumptuous Chinese humbled by superior U.S. power in the
place they wish was their back yard” narrative that I think the China hawks hope
to advance by executing a South China Sea sailthrough.

And it emphasized the unwelcome point that any South China
Sea sailthrough under international law is meaningless in terms of the territorial,
island-building, and sovereignty assertions the U.S. is purporting to
challenge.

So, sailthrough upside rather limited.

What about the downside?

Perhaps President Obama is mindful that a sailthrough, in
addition to serving as a polarizing piece of anti-PRC theater for the military
pivot, will provide the PRC with a further pretext for overtly and irrevocably
militarizing the islands.

[O]fficials with
China’s foreign ministry are claiming military facilities on a series of
artificial islands are “for defense purposes only” in reaction to “high-profile
display[s] of military strength and frequent and large-scale military drills by
certain countries and their allies in the South China Sea …”

Referring to the U.S. and its several multi-national maritime security exercises
in the region, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying statement
came a day after a joint U.S. and Australian statement issued on Tuesday
in which Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Australian Minister of Defense
Marise Payne urged caution on militarizing the South China Sea region.

He is also, I imagine, mindful that sailthrough enthusiasm
among our allies is not strong or even universal, despite a flurry of
statements and articles that appear to be attempting to logroll the White House
by pre-emptively declaring that U.S. credibility is at stake if the much-bruited,
never officially announced, and tactically and strategically dubious sailthrough
doesn’t happen.

I would guess that allies’ enthusiasm for sending naval
vessels to participate in the sailthrough, thereby exposing themselves to the
PRC’s economic and diplomatic retaliation, is not high.

On October 15, this unpromising report came out of Australia (bear in mind it's from the Trade minister. Logrolling cuts both ways; let's see which way Australia actually jumps after the Ministry of Defence has had its say):

Australia wouldn't take part in any U.S. naval patrols aimed at
testing China's territorial claims in the South China Sea and isn't
taking sides in disputes over one of the world's busiest shipping lanes,
Trade Minister Andrew Robb said.

Robb's remarks came after
foreign Minister Julie Bishop met U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter
and Secretary of State John Kerry this week and said Australia is "on
the same page" with the U.S. on the sea, a $5 trillion-a-year shipping
route that the American navy has patrolled largely unchallenged since
World War II.

And for some allies, even providing lip service to U.S.
efforts to uphold the international order against Chinese encroachments seems
to be a challenge.

ROK President Park’s recent visit to Washington apparently
did not yield all that the US desired in terms of pivot-related enthusiasm.

Park has worked to warm up ties with
China and raised some eyebrows in Washington when she attended Beijing's
military parade to mark the end of World War Two last month.

Obama said the United States wanted to
see a strong South Korean relationship with China, just as it wanted such a
relationship itself, but Washington wanted to see Seoul speak out when Beijing
did things that weakened international rules.

Obama was apparently referring to
China's behavior in pursuit of maritime claims in the South China Sea and the
East China Sea, which has alarmed Asian neighbors.

Ms. Park said several
times during the press conference that China’s cooperation is needed with the
U.S. on issues such as nuclear talks with North Korea to economic development.
She said her government wants to “fully utilize” China’s influence in regional
issues.

The conventional narrative is that the ROK’s current tilt
toward the PRC results from a combination of fear and greed.

But a third reason is that the United States is locked into
a deep-tongued, slobbery embrace with Shinzo Abe’s Japan as America’s
indispensable pivot partner.

South Korean hostility toward Japan is, of course, partly
related toward Prime Minister Abe’s ostentatious nostalgia for a powerful Japan
of the kind that killed Korea’s men, raped its women, and sought to obliterate
its culture during the 1930s and 40s.

Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is continuing with "Abenomics," an economic
policy based on massive quantitative easing and weakening of the yen, which
Japan claims will save it from its "lost" two decades.

While Japan has partly succeeded in boosting its economy, that seems to be
based on the sacrifice of other countries, of which Korea has been hit the
hardest.

Korea is concerned
that it will be the biggest victim of Japan's "beggar thy neighbor"
policy.

…

"Countries like
Korea and Germany, where exports take a huge part and the domestic market is
relatively small, are damaged most. Korea is especially so, as its export items
overlap with those of Japan," Lee said.

Korea has been suffering from the massive quantitative easing by Japan as the
won/yen rate has fallen to the lowest level in more than seven years. The
Hyundai Research Institute warns that Korea may see its exports, the only
sustaining pillar of an economy that has lost steam, decrease by 8.8 percent
due to the weak yen.

And:

[T]he international
community seems to be tolerating Japan's manipulation as it has been in such a
long slump.

For “international community,” read “United States” in my
opinion.The Obama administration is
completely in the tank for Abe since keeping Abe happy is essential if he is
going to push unpopular pivot-friendly
initiatives like constitutional reinterpretation and Futenma relocation down
the throats of the Japanese electorate.

In self-defense, the ROK has little choice but to tilt to
the PRC, thereby seriously complicating the US pursuit of regional leadership status not only on the South China Sea issue, but on North Korea as well.

So far the pivot, in addition to delivering tensions with
the PRC, has done a good job of revealing divisions and uncertainty among America’s
allies.

And it will be rather difficult for the sailthrough to
deliver the galvanizing “freedom (+ Vietnam) vs. PRC despotism” confrontation
that papers over the rifts, something that I imagine weighs on President
Obama’s mind as he considers his options.

If the sailthrough happens—and even if it doesn’t—the United
States will continue to wrestle with fundamental and intractable contradictions
within the alliance.

And undoubtedly, the Beltway consensus will be that the only
way out is more, better, and more resolute escalation.

Or, as the busy pivoteers at the Pentagon and think tanks
put it: Ka-ching!

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